Diocese of Olympia in 2006 is radical like ECUSA in 1973

GOD is LOVE: all loving action and all true sexual passion is of God for LOVE is God.

The Diocese of Olympia proclaims its radical creed. But is it merely and only part of the Creed adopted in 1973?

If—as many Episcopalians do—you believe that the Bible is only the beginnings of the record of how people interpreted their experience of God, and that they continue both to have experience of God, record and interpret it, then you can understand the prophetic zeal of the radical progressives in The Episcopal Church and in the Diocese of Olympia in western Washington State. For them the real Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus who included the outcasts, who went to their homes, who enjoyed their company, who affirmed them, said God loved them and sought them, and made them part of his inner group of disciples. Today, for them the action of God as Spirit in the world is to support and affirm the excluded, the needy, those without rights and food. For God loves everyone JUST AS she or he is.

In an affluent city like Seattle, this means God shows special partiality towards those whom the “traditional Church” tends to exclude—e.g., those whose sexual orientation is not within the bounds of normal respectability. Further, in the context of the Anglican Family of Churches, which is dominated by views of God based solely on the first two books of records (OT & NT) and is not reading the later books that bring us into the 21st century, God is seen as using the Diocese of Olympia in a prophetic way to call attention to the later books and to the revelation therein. The pioneers for the radical Jesus in Seattle seek to lead the way not only in The Episcopal Church but also in the global Communion—that is, the way into a full appreciation that GOD IS LOVE and LOVE and TRUE PASSION are of GOD, and that true holiness is found in same-sex relationships.

Here is the resolution passed by the Diocese with a 2/3 majority on October 28.

RESOLVED, That this 96th Convention of the Diocese of Olympia affirms and calls upon the Bishops and Standing Committee of the Diocese to affirm the full inclusion in all areas of the life of the Episcopal Church of our otherwise qualified brother and sister Christians who are single or partnered heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or trans-gendered persons, non-celibate singles, and divorced persons as well as the full inclusion in the Episcopal Church in the full life of the Anglican Communion.

This goes past resolutions passed in the General Convention in its doctrine of inclusivity by specifically including “non-celibate singles and divorced persons.” It blazes the trail for God’s love that the prophets of Seattle have seen and felt clearly, the trail that they want all to walk on and enjoy.

Reflection:
If we slow down for a moment and go back into the recent history of The Episcopal Church, we find that there was in the early 1970s a very powerful period of radical prophetic activity, even more radical than that of the Diocese of Olympia on October 28, 2006.

In the early 1970s began the first general moves to give a full place in the life of the churches to active homosexual and lesbian persons and also, very importantly, at this time, very major changes were made in the doctrine of marriage in The Episcopal Church. The new marriage canon of 1973 passed by the General Convention abandoned the received, traditional view of marriage and created a new “pastoral” canon and doctrine, in accord with the divorce culture and the artificial birth control culture and the self-fulfillment/realization culture from the late 1960s. Here the developing doctrine of the secular world was simply baptized with the name of God and given the blessing of the Church, and thereby serial monogamy, deliberate childless marriage and the ordination and deployment of divorced and remarried persons became common in The Episcopal Church, and remain so until today—even in the so called “conservative” and “orthodox” dioceses. Such radical liberalization served to strengthen the claims of the LesBiGay lobby for full rights (which now they have) and to weaken the whole moral and spiritual fiber of this Church on a very wide front.

Thus it is clear that one of the major causes of the spiritual and moral weakness of the reforming movements (such The Network) in The Episcopal Church is that every time they/we point a finger and criticize the LesBiGay lobby they/we also find their/our thumbs pointing to themselves/ourselves, for what they/we have embraced (the effective rejection of Christian marriage) and made very little effort to change is actually—in the great scheme of things—far more serious that what the LesBiGay lobby works for (because what the LesBiGay lobby works for is parasitic on the failure of Christian Marriage in The Episcopal Church).

drpetertoon@yahoo.com October 30, 2006